asylum
/əˈsaɪləm/noun, verb
asylum is spelled A-S-Y-L-U-M. The wrong spelling people search most is assylum: about 490 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 10 of all searches for the word. Asylum is a noun meaning “A place of safety or refuge”. The plural of asylum is asylums or asyla.
How many letters and syllables are in asylum?
| Letters | 6: A-S-Y-L-U-M |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 9.8 times per million words; the 7,224th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, assylum, about 490 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How do you spell asylum?
Asylum is spelled A-S-Y-L-U-M. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 10 of the searches for asylum in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is asylum?
Asylum appears 9.8 times per million words in written English, the 7,224th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce asylum?
- /əˈsaɪləm/
Asylum has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-asylum.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of asylum
- asylums plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- asyla plural
- asyluming participle, present
- asylumed participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does asylum mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A place of safety or refuge.
- 2
The protection, physical and legal, afforded by such a place (as, for example, for political refugees).
- 3
datedA place of protection or restraint for one or more classes of the disadvantaged, especially the mentally ill.
verb
- 1
datedto place in an asylum
- 2
datedto grant protection or refuge
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Asylum in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | asile , asile psychiatrique |
| German | Asyl , psychiatrische Anstalt |
| Portuguese | asilo , manicómio, manicômio, hospício |
| Spanish | asilo, santuario , manicomio |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does asylum come from?
Learned borrowing from Latin asȳlum, borrowed from Ancient Greek ἄσυλον (ásulon).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).